June
by Julian Steerpike
Summary: Six hours into the closing of the term, Draco Malfoy is found unconscious on Ginny's bed in the Burrow, and she remembers a boy who had stood at the edge of insanity and a terrible greatness, as the bloodiest June of the War begins. DGH
1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

With a start he wakes up, panting, the first rays of sunlight of the morning of the first of June filtering through the threads of thick fabric hanging over his bed. Something sharp is in his mouth: a terrible, specific sense of unease.

Ron Weasley slowly lowers himself back into his bed, the softness against his body providing no comfort. Wincing a little, he shifts to his side; thankfully Groan had caught him, just in time, or else –

Turning his head into his pillow, he already knows that something will happen.

_Chapter One: A Gathering of Heirs_

1st June, 1997

Her room is where the magic of the protective wards are weakest. They do not know why, having only ghost-like suspicions which they wave away, half-annoyed and half-afraid, like they would wisps of frost and long-drawn breath in frigid winter air. But anyhow, they do not tell her.

But one evening on the first of June, the last red tendrils of English sunshine curling slowly away from the expanse of idyllic English countryside, it is due to this inexplicable fact that someone has managed to deliver his charge into the room.

This room, the smallest in the house, has always been a beautiful one, despite its modest furnishing and proportions. Shaped curiously like a quadrant with the curved side adorned with quiet, understated windows, it catches the first rays of morning light, and allows the turning of autumn to be viewed in its rawest red and gold.

When Severus Snape quietly leaves his unconscious charge on the bed in the corner of the room, devoid of its owner who is still blissfully away, in another universe which Hogwarts now belongs to (in his eyes at least, bloodshot and wary), even he stops for a while, knowing somehow why this room would be hers, and there is a wearied quirk to his lips as he ponders the irony of Draco Malfoy being here.

Lying here, defenseless and vulnerable, in Ginny Weasley's room.

As Draco Malfoy lies on Ginny Weasley's bed, his silver-white hair spread out like a halo beneath his head, the fifteen-year-old Heir of the House of Groan, having saved the life of Ronald Weasley days before, is already moving.

Having sent his Muggle uncle and his steward away, he dismisses the remainder of the household with an efficiency which belies his years.

Finally, as he picks up his bags, moving – for he always moves in a half-walk, half-run that cannot be so simply understood as either action - towards the highest balcony, jutting out from the Tower of Stones, he allows himself a smile.

It is time to collect the debts owed to the Noble House of Groan.

He wakes up, and a curtain of long red hair is the first thing he sees.

'…just left him to die…'

'Snape must have left him here…'

'_Why_?'

'…his mother's left, they say…'

'No protection left…'

The somewhat sinisterly familiar voices weave in and out. The sudden light hurts his eyes, but a blink later, the blurs of people swim into view.

Potter, of course. His eyes seem intent on looking at the ceiling, facial muscles drawn tight. The two Weasleys, with the youngest Weasley nearest to him, her hair falling in front of him, face turned away, hidden. The other Weasley looks uncomfortable, and for once the blank expression seems to have left his face, and instead there is some sort of tragic concentration in it – he studies some obscure feature about the place, not looking at anyone in particular. Granger and the Weasleys' parents. McGonagall. Even, to his mild surprise, Lupin, the werewolf professor.

As if everything that had happened was not enough of a nightmare.

A sigh escapes his lips. Ginny Weasley immediately turns around, and, in a concerted effort to state the obvious, says, 'He's awake!'

He tries to sneer at her, if not for the fact that there is no pity in her light amber eyes. Instead they are just wide, with dark grey circles under them, as if she hasn't had enough sleep for a long time. The sight strangles the words in his dry throat, and he can only stare at her, dumbly, and for the world of him he cannot explain why it distracts him so from what he has just escaped from.

The room is curiously bright, and he realises that a full section of it consists of floor-length windows. There is something intimate about the room -

Wincing, he finally finds his voice. 'Where am I?' He sounds harsh, his voice scratching and clawing its way out of his throat. And then, as the implication of his companions finally struck home, a suspicious 'I didn't do anything that you can prove.'

He isn't protecting anyone else. He is just speaking for himself.

It almost makes him feel light-headed.

Finally, a snort from the older Weasley, and ironically enough, the world seems strangely less lopsided now because of his action. Not everything is wrong.

_It's just that_, a voice in his head says mockingly, _a lot of things are. _

'Can you remember how you got here, Malfoy?' asks McGonagall, and in a spurt of annoyance at her evading his question with a question he tries, in one swift action, to get up, but yowls when the pain shoots through his body, a ruthless reminder.

His sleeve. It feels dry, he thinks, breathing shallowly, until he turns his head and realises that the only reason it feels dry is because the blood has long since congealed and hardened on the material.

'I wouldn't move too much, if I were you,' remarks McGonagall, but the acerbic edge to a voice is not there, replaced by something softer in quality. He flinches.

'I don't need your pathetic pity,' he hisses, his eyes fixed on the sleeve.

'We don't need a lot of things in life, Malfoy,' comes a voice, and he is almost startled to realise that its owner is Ginny Weasley. 'But it isn't as if we've got a choice.'

'Ginny…' admonishes her mother, and she in turn turns her full gaze onto him, a heavy, motherly gaze which he draws away from, unable to bear it. 'We'd better see to your injuries, first.' She smiles, and her eyes are over bright. Her voice is warm. He hates her already.

'He needs nothing,' comes Potter's voice, quiet with hatred. Draco whips around, this time barely registering the shock of pain, to return the other boy's steady, unwelcoming gaze. It makes him feel suddenly and recklessly awake. 'He only needs to be killed by his very own Dark Lord.'

The last words were barely a hiss, and at them Draco freezes, retorts stolen from his mind. And then, before anyone can move, Potter turns on his heel and stalks off.

'Harry!' calls Lupin, after him, and he gets up, hastily, going after the idiot, and the action pulls Draco out of his trance.

'Where am I?' Draco asks again.

'In. My. Room,' replies Ginny Weasley, enunciating each word clearly and bitterly, and he dearly wants to slap her, to shake her and scream at her, to tell her that he hates her as much as she hates him. 'Seems like someone got kicked out of Tom's inner circle.'

Something changes in the room at this point; even Draco notices this, as he ponders, wildly, who Tom is, before dimly remembering, and becoming wakefully afraid, and angrily so, although he doesn't know exactly why. He clenches his left fist. Ronald Weasley shifts uncomfortably, and glances at the mudblood Granger, who looks worriedly at Ginny Weasley. The adults look away. Adults always do.

So instead he smiles at Ginny Weasley, a cruel, knowing smile, and asks, 'And you would know about that, wouldn't you, sweet Ginevra?'

Her eyes, for the first time since the year before in Umbridge's office, are intent on him, narrowing, and for that instant he is almost pleased with himself.

But she leans forward, hand reaching towards him, and in a singular motion tears his sleeve off.

'_Non serviam_,' she reads, and the fluster of motion from the others stops suddenly. Everyone stares. '"I will not be a slave,"' she pauses here, then, almost in a whisper, 'A slave to whose will?' She raises her eyes to his, unwavering, before bending down again. 'He wrote it in his handwriting,' she continues abruptly, and he stares, unable to move, as slowly but surely, a tentative finger traces the thin cursive words cut into his flesh, its touch so light he barely feels the pain beneath the caked blood. The expression on her face is almost soft, the facial muscles relaxed. Then the words come out in a torrent, bruising and quick. 'Did he tell you that he would have loved you, if he weren't who he is, and you weren't who you are? Did he ask you if you liked to hear that? Did he laugh?'

'Ginny,' comes another voice, an awkward, upset one; Ronald Weasley's voice. 'It isn't Riddle anymore. It's – it's Voldemort,' he pauses, looking very deadly pale and scared, 'don't let Malfoy get to you, now. It's not Riddle.'

'I know,' his sister replies, and there is a trace of irritation in her voice. Finally she removes her hand away from him, and Draco lets out a breath he hadn't known he had held. 'I know it isn't; it's just something Tom would have done.'

Granger looks quickly, sharply at her.

'Poppy is coming,' McGonagall speaks, her voice stiff, 'Poppy's coming, and then we'll see exactly what kind of hurt has been inflicted on the boy.'

Ginny Weasley looks away, and Draco knows, suddenly, what she is thinking.

When she turns around again, he almost thinks she is smiling at him, a smile as cruel as his own.

'Harry,' she says, and he looks up, self-consciously brushing another stray lock of black hair away from his face. Her face is strangely hard in the darkness, without enough light to bring out the softness of her cheeks. 'Ron said you wanted to talk to me?'

'Yes,' he nods, then, frowning a little, asks, 'Are you alright?'

Ron has told him about how she repeatedly spoke of Riddle in her room, an hour earlier. Malfoy has been shifted to another room by now; he is still sleeping, sedate and dreamless with the aid of potions Harry doesn't believe he deserves. Malfoy deserves nothing.

Ron has told him what Voldemort has written on Malfoy's arm. A war cry: Non serviam. Hermione has said that these were the words Lucifer whispered when he fell, believing himself not to be the subordinate of his Creator.

An example is what Malfoy has been reduced to. Harry almost smiles, cruelly, at this. But Harry isn't cruel. So instead of smiling, he just keeps quiet, letting his anger bide its time.

'I'm fine,' she replies, but her face is thoughtful, facing away from him into the distance beside him, beyond the window which he is next to. 'It's just…'

'It's just what?'

'It's just…' she trails off, and her eyes close, abruptly, briefly, before opening again. She still doesn't look at him. 'Bill and Phlegm's wedding is this weekend. School has only ended for half a day, really, and already…already so many things have happened.'

'You mean Malfoy's happened,' states Harry dryly, and idly he knows there is something she isn't telling him, but he is too spent with the day's anger and bitterness to be able to rally any effort to push further. 'And the attacks on the muggleborns' families have happened. Don't worry, Ginny, everyone's been brought to Hogwarts, and everyone is safe, even the Dursleys are, cooped up in Hogwarts…'

'Hogwarts isn't safe, I thought you would know that,' she cuts in, her voice soft and her words fast, almost tripping over each other. 'They haven't found Groan, the Slytherin Prefect from my year, and his Muggle uncle,' she adds.

Harry sighs. 'I thought everyone would know that Hogwarts isn't safe, Ginny,' he replies, conceding defeat, admitting in his words that he has been patronizing. 'But it's the safest place now; the safest place to house so many people. And Groan and his uncle…well, they haven't found their bodies, and anyway at least we know that Groan had had the time to dismiss an entire household of servants before disappearing, if that's a good sign. And he's in Slytherin…' He trails off, and reaches over and tugs at one long red lock of hair, which falls straight until its last inch, where it pulls into a curl.

'Harry,' she says, and this time her voice is flat. He looks up, startled at the sound. 'Stop doing that.'

'Doing…'

'That,' she says, and a note of agitation has crept into her voice, 'Whatever it is you're doing to my hair.'

Shocked, he lets go of the lock, and it slips away between his fingers. 'Ginny, I…'

'You said it's over,' and she finally faces him, 'you said it's over, at least until you've done what you must. Then you'd better make sure you keep to your own word, Harry James Potter, because I'm not someone you can come back to as and when you like it.'

He has never seen her angry before, at least not at him, and here she is, voice quiet and hard. 'I didn't mean that,' he finally says, shaking his head, then, more fervently, 'I didn't mean it that…'

'I don't care and don't want to know what you meant,' she interrupts, again, but this time there is for some reason a heavy note of tiredness in her tone. She shifts away, getting up, leaving him. 'I'm going to bed, Harry, and you'd better go to bed soon too. We still have to settle Malfoy tomorrow. I heard McGonagall asking Pomfrey if there's any way they can extract information or memories from him, without hurting him. Although why she should care whether or not he gets hurt is beyond me,' Ginny pauses, and Harry is struck again by how hard her face seems without there being enough light to soften it. Her next words tumble out of her, like a flood coming from behind a broken dam. 'I hope he gets hurt; I hope he gets as hurt as – '

'Ginny,' he whispers, and is shocked by how uncertain his own voice is. 'Ginny, stop it. He's not worth it.'

A long gap of silence hangs over them. Then, finally, she nods, and begins to walk away, saying, 'He's not worth it; you're right.' Then, repeating, 'He's not worth it.'

One day, when Harry remembers this conversation, he finally thinks to wonder who she was really referring to.

2nd June, 1997

'He'll never need to know,' Hermione whispers into her ear, and the words she neglects to speak hangs low over the two of them, like a monsoon cloud threatening to break: he'll never need to know, if only you don't say a word, Ginny; if only you don't say a word, he'll look at you and one day he'll smile, memory coloured with the dyes of years, and he'll thank you for this year, he'll love you still.

Ginny looks away, turning so that Draco Malfoy's body, white and calmly breathing, is closer to her, and oddly enough she is thankful for his being here, despite her words to Harry in the early hours of this morning; she feels safe in the presence of something so strangely white and still. Hermione's presence weighs heavily over her, her voice and her scent and her hair all over the place, intrusive, and Ginny wishes she would shut up, shut up, shut up. Go away.

'What are we doing here, anyway?' Hermione asks, and anxiously she rubs her hands about her arms as if she is cold, even though this is June, and summer kisses the windows.

'I thought you'll leave me alone if I came here,' replies Ginny, cruelly but almost absent-mindedly, remembering what Hermione has done. She doesn't turn around, knowing already that Hermione flinches at this.

'You agreed to it eventually,' she whispers, 'you were happy.'

'I was,' Ginny concedes, and her heart wants to relent. She misses Hermione; the smiles and the girlish support and the heady confidence when she confides in her. 'And I know you were just – trying to help…'

'Yes, yes…'

'But you didn't,' Ginny interrupts her, firmly, 'It's gotten worse than ever before. I can't look at him; just looking at him disgusts me. It's – it's so much like what – what Tom did. I can't believe I didn't see that before.'

The last words are spoken almost in a slow, horrified wonderment. Hermione blanches, reaches out towards Ginny, but the smaller girl pulls away before she touches her.

'Ginny, Ginny, it isn't; and Riddle did it because he wanted to kill Harry, not because he wanted to help him – and, and anyway, it wasn't Dark magic; I would never…_Ginny_,' Hermione's words fall over themselves and Ginny stares at her, at the frightened face stripped of its usual seeming assurance. 'I would never, never, _never_ hurt Harry.'

Abruptly, almost as if she hasn't been listening to Hermione, Ginny speaks, 'I can't look at him, Hermione, and I can't let him touch me…'

'It'll be alright, it'll be alright,' Hermione says frantically, never listening, 'Ginny, he'll be alright.'

'No – no he won't be, and Hermione – what about _me_?' Ginny asks, and the two girls face each other.

'Ginny…'

But before Hermione can speak, Draco Malfoy opens his eyes, and, almost as if she senses this already, Ginny Weasley turns back to greet the sight.

Draco wakes up, and with the potions still holding his senses in thrall, a half-formed emotion from a suppressed dream just escapes the vaguely-roused tendrils of his mind.

'You're awake,' comes a voice. He blinks, and a curtain of red hair swims into view, and for a beat he almost sees an eleven-year-old girl with dark blue eyes – but only for a beat. Then it is light brown eyes, flinted and hooded in the morning June sun.

'Weasley,' he replies, but there is hardly a weak thread of bitterness in his voice. Numbness holds his mind in a whiteness strangely devoid of feeling. 'McGonagall…'

'She should be coming with Pomfrey soon,' replies Weasley, voice with nary an inflection, 'There're other things that need to be attended to in Hogwarts.'

'So he did it then,' he remarks, and he almost forgets to wonder at how this conversation seems to actually be progressing.

'Tom would always have done it,' nods Weasley, 'and he'll do more.'

'Ginny, don't…' another voice enters, and breaks the spell. 'Ginny, come on, we should tell the others that he's awake…'

'You go,' Weasley replies almost quickly, almost gratefully, 'I'll stay.'

'Ginny!' Granger expostulates, her voice going up by an octave. 'Honestly, what is wrong with you?' Her voice becomes suddenly frantic now, abruptly lowering to a hiss. 'I've only done all this for everyone's good, and you should stop talking about Riddle as if he – well, because he isn't, and Malfoy, well, Malfoy – he's…'

'I know, I know, Hermione, which is why I can't talk to any of you right now; we've both of us talked too much to each other. _I've _said too much. We can always talk later, but we won't stop unless I stop seeing you around for a while,' Weasley's speech is comes in staccato beats, short and sharp, and Draco almost narrows his eyes, vaguely wondering, as she continues, 'So go. And hurry, Hermione, and bring all of them with you, but don't talk to him, please don't; you won't be able to now without – being strange.'

Finally Granger nods, and, looking pale, hurries out of the room.

'McGonagall put up wards around the room; you can't move your arms or legs until she lifts them,' Weasley says cleanly without preamble, just as the door closes softly behind Granger.

'I figured,' he replies, and is almost surprised that it comes out dryly.

'I would say I'm sorry if I were to care, and if I were to think you'll believe me,' she says, in her mercurial fashion, all brilliant red and burnished gold like he remembers, in swimming, unfocussed technicolour memory, and there is no pity in her eyes.

'I would believe you,' he answers almost heavily, not wanting to care about the former clause in her speech, and instead focusing on the latter. 'You've never lied to me before.'

'We've never talked much. We don't happen to like each other. I might in fact hate you, considering what your father…' she mentions him without pausing, without looking at Draco, and continues easily, '…did in my first year, and considering that you let him do it, and considering all the other things that you have done to us Weasleys, collectively or separately,' she says, tone and intonation still clean and light, like a sharp summer wind, 'Even though admittedly, you've never insulted me as much as you did others. Is that a sign of friendship and trust, Malfoy?'

He almost smiles. 'Not quite, I suppose. But you don't lie for – such purposes.'

'How do you know?'

'You don't. You've always told them about Tom Riddle, haven't you, and nobody's ever listened.' He watches her; he realizes that in this state of numbness he is thankful at the distraction that is her. 'You've always had diarrhea of the mouth.'

'If you've realized and somehow listened, then why did you do what you did then, Malfoy?' she leans forward. There is a strange gold glint to her eyes, too light to be called brown, really. 'What did he do to you?'

'I don't know anymore, for the former. As for the latter question, he wanted me dead. I don't know why I'm not,' he says, quickly, frankly, calmly, 'and honestly like you I've always had diarrhea of the mouth, too.'

'I know,' she smiles, this time, 'that's how I got to hex you in your fifth year.'

'That was painful,' he admits, almost freely, and wonders suddenly whether he should count the seconds this conversation lasts, so that he can remember it more factually later.

Weasley's eyes are a light yet burnished gold.

Then the door opens and Weasley turns around, quickly, and away from him, and they enter the room, with Potter leading, and suddenly the numbness loses its hold, and the words leave him and only the pain is left.

When they finally get Malfoy to speak, it is only through Veritaserum. Harry frowns; having come close to the door first, he knows he had heard Malfoy's voice, the thin inflection dying just as his hand turned the knob.

'Ginny, can I come in?' he asks, still mulling over Malfoy's words, Malfoy's actions, still letting his anger brew within himself, quietly and hotly. He raps on the door, slightly ajar. 'Ginny?'

'Harry, I…'

But Harry has already entered the threshold, and he stops as Ginny pulls a swath of material about her, heavy and white. 'What's that?' he asks, pointing.

'I thought I told you not to come in,' Ginny says in answer, and her forehead is creased. Unheeding, Harry walks over, his slight, lanky frame folding easily into a cross-legged position on the floor next to her.

'You didn't manage to say so,' he says, softly, 'and anyway, Ginny, how come you're so irritable?'

'It's the bridesmaid dress Phlegm ordered,' replies Ginny, still not looking at him.

'Gin…' Harry feels the edge of something starting to spill over onto his control. 'What's got into you?'

'Well, the fact that I found Malfoy lying on my bed…' begins Ginny, but Harry stops her, his hand reaching out, slender fingers circling around her arm. She looks very nearly beautiful like this, her hair undone and in long, loose waves, the sunlight from the windows kissing it and seeming to set it ablaze. Something clenches around Harry's heart, and he shakes his head.

'Ginny, it's not just Malfoy, is it? Are you angry with me? Because of my breaking up with you – Ginny, I'm not breaking up with you, not really, it's just that…'

'Harry,' Ginny interrupts, and there is a strange look on her face, 'not everything's about you.'

'I know,' Harry finally snaps, 'But you've been this way since I came here 'cos the Dursleys were deposited at Hogwarts…'

'Well then, it's not all about you,' Ginny retorts, and the sharpness of her tone almost causes Harry to flinch, but he doesn't loosen his grip on her. Her eyes finally meet his, a murky brown, seeming incongruous on her white, small face.

'I'm not angry with you, Harry,' Ginny finally says, softly and heavily, 'it's just – there're a lot of things happening now, and…'

'You can talk to me about it,' Harry whispers, leaning his head towards hers, adjusting slightly until his cheek is pressed against hers. 'Gin, I really do…'

'I know,' Ginny says quickly, 'I know.'

'Is it Riddle? Do you – do you still have nightmares about him? Is that why you were so bothered about Malfoy's arm?' Harry asks, pulling back, before placing his other hand on her shoulder, feeling the hard shoulder blade clearly beneath the thin cotton of her shirt. She continues to return his gaze steadily, but he doesn't remember, really, her eyes being such a shade of brown. A gap of silence falls between them.

'Harry,' she says finally, and there is a quirk to her lips, and he realizes that she is smiling – a dry, thin smile devoid of mirth.

Suddenly his mouth feels very dry, as he waits for her next words.

'I've always had nightmares about him.'

Ron remembers when Ginny first returned home, that year when the Chamber opened. He refuses to remember it as the year when Ginny opened the Chamber.

He would count to a hundred, quickly and softly, listening to the screams from the room next to his, something twisting within him, and then the footsteps, heavier and older, and when he finally reaches a hundred, he would climb out of his bed, feet cold on the floor despite the June warmth, and grope his way blindly into her room.

He remembers just how the moonlight floods into her room, viscous and accusing, and once he had whispered, holding tightly onto her hand as she sobbed, gaspingly, 'Should I stay with her, mum – just in case, well, just in case _things_ come…'

A quick, fierce look from his mother had censured him from continuing.

And he remembers the mornings, strangely cold for June, when Ginny stirred the cold milk in her bowl of cornflakes: thrice clockwise, thrice counter-clockwise, again and again, until the milk turned yellow and Ron would reach over, clumsily and hurriedly, and stop her.

But Ginny seems alright, his mother would say, Ginny _is _alright, look, she's talking as always, and she's well-behaved, and she's…

And she's brushing her hair straight, over and over again at night in front of her mirror, Ron remembers thinking, just unlike how she once told you she was too tired at night to do so. And she's brushing her hair, and telling me about things Riddle said, clever things, and funny things.

Looking into the same mirror as he stands behind her now, Ron remembers that he had thought, even then, that Ginny is beautiful, really, in a quiet, pure way; she is beautiful in a manner that is so polite, you don't realize it until you watch her, just as Ron remembers he had, that summer. Her skin is fair, not pale, her hair a rich, heavy red, her lips small and shell-pink. Her eyes are gold. As Ron grows older, and begins to see other girls – Fleur Delacour, his future sister-in-law, and her sister, Gabrielle, Cho Chang, Lavender Brown, Parvati and Padma Patil – with the kind of beauty that is immediate and straightforward; he cannot help reacting to it. But even so, cloudily, Ron always knows that Ginny is just as beautiful; he acknowledges with that mixture of pride and reluctance that only a brother would know.

'How do I look, Ron?' Ginny asks, shifting a little in her bridesmaid's dress, which she has mumbled earlier about being made of cotton overlaid with some kind of expensive lace; it is a simple dress, white and sleeveless and with a lightly pleated, slightly flaring skirt.

Beautiful, Ron thinks, but instead answers, 'Alright, good,' nodding as he does so. Ginny catches his eye and smiles, knowing him well enough. 'C'mon Ron, you're so stingy. Bill and Charlie would've told me the truth.'

'And you're very sure of yourself, aren't you?' replies Ron, grinning, before continuing, his eyes half-closed as the sunlight shifts and filters more strongly into the room, 'I'm sure Harry'll like it.'

He studies her almost lazily beneath his lashes, watching as the smile drops clearly from his sister's face.

'What did Harry say to you?' demands Ginny. She does not turn around; her eyes meet his in the mirror.

'He didn't say anything, Gin; I'm not so very thick that I can't see what's going on in front of me,' Ron pauses, 'What did you do, Gin?'

Something stills within her, and in the mirror she is suddenly seems static, although she had not been moving all this time.

'I didn't do anything.' Her words are quick.

'You're guilty,' accuses Ron, but not roughly. 'You wouldn't have been talking so much about Riddle otherwise.'

'What do you…?'

'I remember the summer after your first year, Gin; you kept saying things about him, you wouldn't stop,' Ron says, and he hears a thread of desperation in his voice, now. 'Harry didn't need to say anything – Harry doesn't understand, does he? And this isn't about Malfoy, as much as he'll rather talk to you than the rest of us…'

'How did you know?'

'Harry told me that, at least,' Ron concedes. 'Ginny,' he coaxes, turning her around, 'Tell me, and I'll do whatever I can. This time, I promise.'

Ginny closes her eyes, before they flutter open again. She looks up, and Ron, not for the first time, realizes how much smaller she seems compared to himself. Her tone is quiet as she speaks. 'I didn't do it, Ron. But I can't tell you what it is about, either. Not yet, anyway.'

Ron nods, slowly, uncomprehending her words but strangely accepting of it. She will tell him sooner or later – she will. At least – at least now she knows that he wants to listen to her.

Slowly, slowly, he pulls her towards him, and when he embraces her he remembers as he had that night, how small and how frightened she must be.

And then he pulls away, kissing her on the forehead, and heads to the kitchen, the sense that something is coming awaking vaguely in his conscience, even as he slowly descends the stairs towards his mother's kitchen, with the warm smells of food and home emanating from it.

_I shut my eyes and the world drops dead/ (I think I made you up inside my head)_

Ginny fingers the penciled writing on the wall behind Draco Malfoy's bed – Percy's bed, really, but now only Draco Malfoy is on it, so it was of his ownership, however temporarily and however unwittingly – and recognizes it; it is by a Muggle poet, a tragic Muggle poet, who put her head into an oven, slowly and calmly, and killed herself.

'Sylvia Plath,' drawls a voice, invading into her thoughts. She turns around to face him; Malfoy is upright against the headboard of the bed, in Percy's pajamas, the cuffs reaching over his wrists by half an inch. 'I read the quote just now; it's from one of her poems.'

'_Mad Girl's Love Song_,' nods Ginny, 'I didn't know you liked Muggle poets.'

'I don't,' replies Malfoy, managing to inject disgust and dislike and so many other unpleasant things into his voice as he does so. 'I read it somewhere, that's all.'

Ginny can tell him that it does say something that Malfoy should read a Muggle poet's work anywhere, but instead doesn't, knowing suddenly that he can ask her, as well, why she should know so clearly where the quote comes from, and so she asks, 'What does it feel like, Malfoy, to take Veritaserum?'

'Why don't you ask me what it feels like to know that your father is dead, and that your mother has probably gone in that direction, too?' replies Malfoy, softly, but there is a dense lick of anger in his tone, and Ginny recognizes it all too well.

She doesn't care for it. She opens her mouth, recklessly, to say something, but he is too fast for her.

'Why are you here anyway, Weasley?' he asks. The bruises about his face have long faded, but the shadows remain. 'Why aren't you with Saint Potter?' He leans forward, his face inches from hers. 'I can't tell you much about your Tom, if that's what you want. He's ugly; he isn't what you would know.'

'Not everything is about Harry, not everything is about Tom, and not everything is about you,' retorts Ginny, not backing down. This close, his skin seems almost white, his hair silver – the colour of early morning virgin snow.

'But everything is about you and all of us combined, isn't it, Weasley, and that's why you've come here to avoid everyone else,' drawls Malfoy, and amazingly, she sees a ghost of a smirk flit about his face. She knows his silence is his display of grief; she knows it hasn't really sunk in yet. She has seen him cry before, during Prefect rounds with Groan, with Myrtle hovering him. 'We're an expert at losing friends and alienating people, aren't we, Weasley?'

Back stiffening, she doesn't dignify him with an answer, and instead leaves without a word, walking down to her mother's kitchen, where Ron has already settled himself into a chair.

The family, Harry, Hermione and Fleur Delacour are gathered about the table when they hear the cough from the living room.

For a moment everyone freezes; then, in a flurry of movement, Mr. Weasley crosses over the threshold between the two sections of the first floor of the Burrow, his wand before him – and then stops.

Before the fireplace, a tall, slender figure stands, bags around his feet. There is an English politeness about his short, sand-coloured hair, and his incongruous, violent-shaded eyes are almost too close together as he looks up at Mr. Weasley, but even the Weasley patriarch senses the sharp sensuality and potency that _is _the boy, and which cannot be diminished by the dust and the fading sunlight.

The boy smiles.

'Mr. Weasley,' he says, 'My name is Timothy, of the Noble House of Groan.'


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer (applicable to all chapters, really): I(rather unfortunately) do notown anything, other than (some of) the plot.

Chapter Two: No One Answers

For moments everyone is still: standing here, having arrived in a fireplace which has been closed off from the main Floo network since the night before, is a boy grown Aurors have been searching high and low for.

And then Ginny rushes forward, pushing past her father, and throws her arms about the slender, pale figure, a gurgle of words that trips over themselves coming out of her mouth. The gist of her outburst, however, is finally made clear, as extricating himself slowly from her, the boy smiles and promises in his clear intimate voice that he will tell her everything.

'Ginny,' comes a wondering voice, 'who is this?'

Right hand still linking the boy's left, Ginny turns around, as if released from a trance. Finally, she says in a voice rushed with a bubbling kind of ecstasy, 'This is Timothy; he has told you already. Timothy Groan, mum, from school, and one of my best friends,' she pauses, smilingly, and then continues, 'I promised him he could come and stay.'

Blindly, as she says this, she does not notice Harry Potter turning away, suddenly unable to take the sight of her.

­­­­­­­­­XXX

Upstairs, Draco Malfoy frowns as he slips a long, slender finger into a small crevice in the wall behind the low backless shelf located directly (and rather unwisely, he had thought previously, wondering how many times Percy Weasley could have banged his head against its cheap pine) above the bed frame, almost diagonally across from the penciled words. He almost imagines that he can see, from this height, a thin sliver of weak light from the hole, aborted abruptly by the row of books – but he is not certain if it is really that deep enough to reach the other side.

Finally he pulls his finger out again, and shifting his body against the bed frame, he uses his legs and body weight to somehow straddle the bed forward slightly, making sure not to trigger the wards, which are, as he has enquired of McGonagall this morning, within a half metre of the sides of the bed. His arm, reaching upwards onto the shelf, hurts, despite it being in a less uncomfortable position now, but he ignores it, clamping down on the pain and the memories and the terrible future, and taking the books down carefully and placing them onto the bed, he finally manages to be eye level with the hole, his body half on the bed and half upright.

A whorl of dust and light greets him, and behind the small crevice, at an awkward angle and almost half a floor above, stretches the room which he had awoken in the day before.

Ginny Weasley's room.

XXX

Outside, Harry Potter can still hear Timothy Groan's soft insinuating voice and the reactions of the Weasleys to his words. A fluid action beside him allows for a slender, womanly frame to drop onto the steps facing the Weasley backyard. Fleur Delacour is next to him, her hair like faery strands of ivory-coloured silk in the growing darkness.

'You like Ginny?' she says rather than asks without preamble, her words curling and thick just as Groan's are thin, even as they are as pregnant.

Harry frowns. 'If you've been in this house for so long, I'm sure you would have heard about this by now,' he replies, not bothering to keep the irritation from showing itself.

Fleur turns around, and fixes her gaze on him, cat-like and bright, but strangely unseeing. 'Not 'heverything is about you, 'arry,' she whispers, almost in a sing-song voice. 'Ginny is a lot of things, and you're…' she pauses here, smiling lightly and almost to herself, 'you're just one of those things.'

'You think she's forgotten about me?' Harry asks, sharply.

Fleur clicks her tongue, and her mouth twists into a deeper, wider inflection. 'You're still asking the wrong questions, 'arry,' she replies cryptically, 'You've got to – 'ow do you say it? – change the subjects of your question about,' she ends, and helpfully pats his knee.

'So I'm supposed to ask if _I've_ forgotten about _her_?' he demands heatedly. 'What in the world do you mean by that, Fleur?'

'Exactly what I mean,' she replies, except this time, abruptly, there is nothing cat-like to her eyes, and nothing remotely detached in her tone. Suddenly Harry feels cold, and Fleur's face seems almost to be made of sharp shafts and angular plains in the dim light. 'You must realize who Ginny is, Harry Potter, since you seem to have always forgotten about that.'

And with these words Fleur gets up, leaving him in the gathering darkness, and it is a long time before Harry realizes that she has not mispronounced his name.

XXX

Inside, Timothy Groan does not seem to have any answers. He has had a private, one-way and one-trip Floo connection to the Weasleys' (with personal permission from Ginny, in blood an owner of the Burrow), and he has disabled it since, well, he has obviously just used it. But he does not say why or when or where; politely, he addresses Mrs. Weasley's question – she has already warmed to him, with his quiet measured voice. No, he did not know about the attacks then – but he lightly laughs, in an endearingly self-deprecating manner, and jokes about something about clairvoyance, and constant vigilance.

Hermione Granger wonders if he is about to say something about being a snake. Narrow-eyed, she studies how closely Groan is sitting next to Ginny; as Groan addresses each Weasley in turn, and wonders why Ron has not protested. Ron is watching Groan with a frank interest that is distinctly lacking in hostility. The twins laugh; Hermione turns away, knowing sickeningly that Harry isn't around.

Fleur slides noiselessly into the room, and shakes her magnificent head at Hermione. It is a testimony to how much Timothy Groan has his audience in thrall, as no one, not even Ron, notices this. Hermione winces, almost: Harry being Harry, she already knows what he must be thinking.

Poor Harry.

Hermione frowns, to herself, because that last thought leads to a train of other thoughts, as is often the case with her; yet this train is so dense and convoluted in structure even Hermione begins to feel the foetal stirrings of helplessness somewhere within her consciousness.

She cannot understand why, after all that _she _has done, Ginny would decide to treat Harry this way. She never did understand why Ginny should ever have protested against it, but finally she had gone along…but now, even as everything seems to fall apart, Ginny seems to be insisting on heading in that direction.

She suddenly wonders how much she knows about Ginny, sliding a glance towards her from the corner of her eye, and watching her seated so easily by Groan's side.

Timothy Groan. Hermione frowns again, this time almost forgetting her previous entanglement of thoughts, rolling his name slowly and carefully in her mouth. A fifth-year Slytherin Prefect, quiet and adroit of movement; Hermione once overheard the Head Girl saying, in a sharp, violent voice quite opposite to her usual mild tones, that she hated him, hated him. Hermione remembers the quick, horrid quirk to the older girl's lips, grotesque with such a foreign exertion.

She wonders, suddenly almost afraid, why Ginny has never mentioned him to her.

XXX

Far away from the Burrow, what is left of Tom Riddle holds court.

'Severus,' he says, in a thin, keening voice, 'why is it that the rest of the wizarding world has not heard about the sacrificial lamb that is Lucius's son?'

The last words in his question are slow, and the eyes, red in its core but with a strange graduation of dark blue spreading from its centre, tilt towards a bowed head, its light hair silver in the dim light. There is no movement from the Death Eater, and a languid, terrible smile stretches Voldemort's lips.

In some hell, his mother might weep.

Then the smile slides from the face, and he returns his gaze to Snape, similarly bowed before him.

'McGonagall, I would suppose, milord, does not want to give us a reaction,' replies Snape, and there is nothing in his voice.

'He is crippled, then? Crippled to an extent that he can never wield magic again?'

'Yes, milord,' Snape answers, mechanically, then abruptly, almost in a show of some form of life within him, lifts his head calmly and continues, 'However, it seems Poppy Pomfrey has been made to watch over him; the Weasleys, it seems, are to nurse him back to health, at the least. He should survive.'

Voldemort nods at this, lightly and almost distractedly; his quick eyes have returned to Lucius's form; there is nothing in the clean, well-cut frame.

'The Weasleys – their youngest son, Ronald, I remember, being Potter's best friend; and their youngest daughter…'

Tom Riddle, his face ageless and cruelly smooth, smiles, and this time Snape, his face being the only one tilted up towards him, sees it, and almost flinches.

'I remember the girl.'

XXX

In the room in the left corner of the fifth landing of the Burrow, just below the attic, a boy awakes, panting, just as Snape finally turns away from Tom Riddle's face.

Blimey, a strange dream that one was. Ginny talking, and talking, her eyes staring straight in front of her, and figures and figures walking around and around her and him being unable to push pass them towards her. Another voice, thin and reed-like and almost soft, saying that he – it was a male voice, he is sure – remembers someone, a girl.

He blinks, shakes his head, and looks over towards his clock, at the far end of the room where Harry's bed is…

He bolts out of bed, knowing already that something has gone wrong, and not just because Harry is not in his bed.

XXX

Almost fifteen minutes before Ron wakes up, Ginny slips out of her room, drawing her arms about herself as she shivers; the air is strangely cold for June.

Before she can turn, however, her fingers barely having left the knob of her door, someone moves out of the shadows and speaks.

'What are you doing out so late, Ginny?'

'Harry,' she breathes, after recovering her composure, 'what are you doing here?'

'Standing,' he replies, and there is something hard in his tone, something indefinable. 'I suppose you're about to go looking for someone. Groan, maybe?'

Ginny lets out a quick, frustrated sound, before whispering back, 'We're not together anymore, Harry James Potter.'

'So you and Groan, _one of your best friends_, are what I think we were?'

'Harry, don't think,' she retorts sharply, 'it doesn't become you.' She moves forward, meaning to sidestep him.

'What exactly is it with you and Slytherin Prefects, Ginny?' he hisses, low and harsh, and she stops, staring at him; something passes between them and suddenly everything has changed, to Ginny at least.

'I'm going now, Potter,' she says, slowly and deliberately, and he reels as if he has been slapped. Before she has had the chance to move, he has reached out and gripped her arm, pushing her against the corridor wall in one swift movement. There is something broken in his expression; she cannot pause to care.

'Ginny, I'm not going to be here for long,' he says, the words quick and desperate, 'and please, I just...you've got to listen to me, you can't be like this…'

'Timothy is one of my best friends,' replies Ginny, softly, looking directly at him, 'and I don't need to explain myself to you.'

'Ginny, I…'

'When you find out about everything, in the end, Harry, you'll think differently. I'm tired now; just let me go,' she interjects, and as the grip loosens, as he stares at her, lost and upset, she slips beneath his arm and walks into the darkness, and doesn't turn back.

XXX

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­When Ginny is in his arms, back against the couch at the end of Charlie's room, she falls asleep quickly and doesn't whisper or scream.

At the window, his eagle owl in its cage gives a low, melancholic hoot; in the morning, Mr. Weasley will banish it ('Let it out,' were his precise words, but Timothy is an unflinching boy) into the nearby woods along with the rest of the family owls for the rest of the summer: it has already been established to him that he is not to owl, because no word is to be expressed about the state of things – people – within the Burrow.

Timothy Groan smiles to himself and he reaches around her towards the thin archaic reed pipe, the stuff of another pale, slender Groan before him; balancing it between his long fingers, he begins to play.

It is a low hypnotizing tune, and only the night knows how beautifully he plays, and only the night can despair of a thing he cannot do.

Beside him, Ginny Weasley sleeps, tangled red hair over her white face.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­XXX

'Harry,' says Ron, immediately after the two boys almost collide into each other in the stairway just midway above the third landing where Ginny's room is, 'something's going to happen to Ginny.'

When the words tumble out of his mouth, half breathless, he doesn't even know where they came from. He doesn't even think to ask why Harry was out of bed at this hour in the first place.

Harry narrows his eyes. 'What do you mean?'

'I don't know, it's just…' Helplessly, Ron sweeps his tousled hair up with a hand. 'Harry, I know this is going to sound mental, and I'm not quite sure myself what exactly is going on and how I somehow know that I'm right, but you've got to hear me out…'

XXX

His heart clenches to fit in this new toy, the tiny hole just slightly higher than halfway ; it should feel very empty, actually, what with his father's death and his mother's disappearance and Tom Riddle's words, but years and inertia doesn't an efficient compartmentalization and updated profile of one's heart make.

He remembers as he falls asleep, vaguely from somewhere, a pale face and some words, but he can no longer remember what exactly is real and what exactly is from dreams or waking dreams; sometimes in the rush everything had seemed to meld into one another, in this past year.

Draco remembers, when he was young, to have seen someone seated at the second floor of the Malfoy library, leg crooked at an angle and back against the Louis XIV, someone smiling and pale, but something cold had gripped him and he had run past ahead instead of stopping to look at the person; years later, he can never know whether the person had been a person, real and breathing hollow breath in the thick stifling air of June, or whether the person had only been a figment of his imagination.

He remembers another pale face, and a shock of hair that is so neutral in its colour it is impossible to define; he remembers whispered words, the cold serpentine smile in each syllable as a voice said, 'Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a man of wealth and taste.'

He remembers, and he remembers, and then a hand pulls at him –

And he wakes up, screaming, and stares into Ginny Weasley's pale face.

XXX

He is panting; it is half past five in the morning of Bill's wedding. She had woken up earlier to get back to her room before Hermione wakes up, when she had heard the screaming.

Sightlessly screaming, he had clawed at her before the wide gray eyes had finally snapped open, and now she watches him carefully, knowing not to speak.

'Weasley,' he finally manages. He looks away. A long silence follows.

'I know it'll be useless to tell you that everything will be alright,' Ginny finally says, 'So I figure I'll just remind you it's morning.'

Malfoy finally turns back to her, his expression inscrutable. Eventually he says, 'I know, Weasley,' and she recognizes the familiar thread of condescension in it.

She turns to return to her room at this point; from the far corner of her eye, she almost imagines that something changes in his countenance at this point.

Closing the door, she feels his eyes on herself.

XXX

That night, Ginny's dress still white about herself and the celebratory Butterbeer still coursing through her system, she stops, shocked, as she watches Harry, Ron and Hermione move carefully along the corridor just as she is entering the bathroom.

They stop at the sound of her gasp.

'You're going,' Ginny says, the words sounding limp and useless; 'you're going off to face Tom, aren't you?' And then, suddenly with greater conviction, 'Without me, and without telling Mum and Dad.'

'Ginny,' coaxes Ron, stepping forward, 'we need to go _now_. We can't possibly...'

'Bring me along because I'm too young?' finishes Ginny in a deceptively soft voice. 'You're going to find the Horcruxes without my help?'

'Ginny, please…' begins Harry, and suddenly she hates the way he calls her name, softly and politely; it reminds her very much of Tom. She flinches, backing away from him.

She turns on Hermione, a blind anger surging through her.

'And why does Hermione deserve to go with you, and not me?'

'This has nothing to do with Hermione…'

'Really?' A wide quirk comes upon Ginny's lips, stretching her mouth into an ugly sneer. 'Would you like to hear what Hermione has done this past term, Harry?' Her words are sharp and fierce, and Hermione blanches.

'Ginny, what are you doing?' Hermione hisses, eyes wide, but the strange contortion of Ginny's lips deepens.

'What's Hermione done, Ginny?' Ron blurts in, but there is something fearful in his eyes, and that is enough to make Ginny hesitate.

Her hesitation only lasts a moment, but within this moment a loud crash sounds, and then everything goes black.

XXX

Note on the lay-out on the Weasleys' house: in CoS, it was established that Ginny's room is on the third landing, Percy's on the second floor, and Ron's on the fifth landing below the attic. Please do forgive the fact that I'd forgotten that the Weasleys' kitchen is too small for so many people to eat in in the previous chapter! The author apologises for the (slight) floutation of canon.

Theline 'Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a man of wealth and taste' is from The Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil', and entirely belongs to them.

With thanks to those who had reviewed the last chapter. Hope you like this one too :)


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything that's of the Harry Potter world - the talented Ms. Rowling does.The character of Timothy Groan belongs to me, but was shamelessly inspired by Steerpike, Mervyn Peake's villain in the Gormenghast trilogy; the character of Titus Groan, the seventy-seventh Heir, is straight from the abovementioned trilogy, but does not exhibit entirely the exact traits of the original character.

With love and thanks to all reviewers of the last two chapters; hope you'll like this chapter, too. :)

Chapter Three: A Question of Need

A tall, slender figure has managed to catch Ginny just as she keels forwards; stepping forward into the light as he does so, the figure reveals himself to be Timothy Groan.

'What did you do to her?' demands Ron, horrified, as Ginny's head lolls backwards against Groan's chest.

Something, almost an expression, flits past Groan's clear, nondescript face like a light ripple on a still pond. 'I didn't do anything. That,' he says, motioning to a relatively small but nevertheless heavy oak photo frame which lay, until then forgotten, on the floor, 'was what hit Ginny on the head, and it seems she has been knocked unconscious because of it. I'll just bring her to Mrs.…'

'Very timely so,' Hermione suddenly interrupts, and narrows her eyes at the younger boy.

Groan merely raises his eyebrows, and does not say anything.

'Ron, Hermione, we've got to…' Harry begins, and then stops, turning back at Groan, peering suspiciously at the boy through the dim light.

'Go?' suggests Groan, and nonchalantly he checks his wristwatch. 'The last train leaving Ottery St. Catchpole leaves in well, fifteen minutes. I would recommend you hurry,' he continues, in a tone of voice which would have been taken as helpful, if not for the fact that his eyes are unerringly unblinking.

'But Ginny…' begins Harry, his brow furrowing.

'How do you know we're leaving?' asks Ron brusquely, addressing Groan. He has had a good impression of Groan all the while; this, however, disappears in the light of his inexplicable appearance just as Ginny passed out. But he remembers, of course, what Groan has done for him, and restrains himself.

'You're dressed and carrying bags at this hour about the house,' replies Groan in the same calm, nearly pleasant tone. His neutral, sand-coloured hair looks almost translucent in the pale light.

'You're a snake, that's what you are,' explodes Hermione abruptly, 'how can we possibly trust that once we leave you wouldn't tell on us, and that you won't do anything…' she struggles for a suitable word, '_untoward _to Ginny?'

'Because I don't care for any one of you, except by way of accident,' he pauses, glancing for some reason at Ron, 'and because I've had plenty of opportunities to do untoward things to Ginny and I haven't,' he finishes, his words clipping against each other, and punctuates the statement with a strange, sideward smile. Yet there seems to be something missing about him: Hermione frowns, realizing that the usual perfect façade of pleasant politeness is revealing chinks in its armour. She stares at him, at the light shadows about his eyes.

So this is what Groan is when he's tired.

But Hermione remembers Groan dancing with Ginny at the wedding, his body respectfully apart from hers, and Groan brushing something off Ginny's hair, seemingly distractedly, and she remembers what they – Harry, Ron and herself – have to do.

'Fine then,' she says, shortly, and turns to Harry and Ron. 'Come on, we've got no time for this. Ginny will be safe enough here,' she pauses, and casts one final purposeful glance at Groan. 'He wouldn't try to do anything to her within the Burrow; it's too well-protected against aggressive spells, and anyway the others would hear him easily.'

'But of course,' agrees Groan, expression unchanged. He shifts Ginny's body, so that she is facing him, her head falling onto his shoulder and resting against his neck. Ron looks worried; Harry looks away.

'Goodbye then,' Ron finally manages, 'And make sure you get Mum to look after Ginny as soon as possible.'

'I will,' Groan nods, and turns away, half-carrying, half-pulling Ginny along with him, her white dress brushing against the corridor.

'And Groan,' continues Ron, looking almost as if he were choking on his own words. Groan stops, but does not turn around. 'Thank you for everything. Well, you know.'

Groan gives a curt, sharp nod, and rounding the corner, his short neat hair even more so that indecisive, quite indefinable colour against the rich red of Ginny's, his footsteps fade away slowly.

Ignoring Harry's questioning look, Ron turns away, very suddenly pale.

XXX

_The dark-haired boy sweeps a finger along the jaw line; it is clean and very delicately sharp, and it pleases him. He very much likes the rich red of the hair, too, and the wide amber eyes and the small, perfect mouth. Altogether all these things are beautiful; he likes it like the way he likes all of those other things that he collected from other people, really a lifetime ago – half a century – but so very near the tips of his fingers, only one or two or six or seven years ago from his own very real youth. _

_Perhaps, if she somehow manages to survive this – he doubts it, smiling almost disappointedly, like a cat which finds its mouse dead instead of alive – he could keep her in a special glass room, and watch her grow into something even more beautiful. He would like that. She would be so perfectly untouched, and the red and the white and the gold would be so pure. So perfectly ready to be defiled, just behind a thin glass; he could watch behind and press his fingers against its surface and smile to himself. _

_He himself is young. Only seventeen. _

_Leaning forward, he presses his finger against her lips, and feels the life within her ebb away. _

XXX

Only seventeen and wanting to stop a grief only more acute in isolation, Draco Malfoy thinks of the girl who had woken him up this morning, the girl whom he had followed with his eyes, half-lazily, across the backyard of the Burrow, on the other side of the window to his left, the girl whose room he can see into through the forgotten hole in the wall.

Clenching his fist, the back of his hand laced with silvery wounds, and ignoring the words across his arm, he tries to remember the first time he had seen her, at the bookshop in the summer before his second year, but a strange lurching sensation in his stomach makes him know rather than recall that something isn't right. He doesn't remember something, for some reason. Something is at the tips of his memory, but isn't within its reach.

It disturbs him, and distracts him enough.

Finally, as the minutes tick by and sleep slowly claims him, a finger is swept along a jaw line somewhere and in some time, and he smiles, unseeing.

XXX

Moving quickly and silently in his strange half-walking, half-running gait, he returns to the corridor, stopping at the fallen frame.

Slipping his hand into a black glove, he carefully and slowly pulls a single long, hooked wire from the back of the frame, strong but thin and almost invisible from a distance. He pockets the wire, and then, with the same hand, lifts the heavy frame with some difficulty and returns it to its original position on the wall. He stands back for a moment, staring into the photograph of a picturesque Romanian countryside, and, deciding something, he nods, more to himself than anything, and leaves for his room.

Picking up the gold-handled wand from the desk at the corner of the room, he bends over her, having left her on the bed only moments ago, and mutters a spell, before slipping the wand into the folds of his robes which he had thrown onto his bed, as he waits for her to regain consciousness.

'Ginny,' Timothy Groan smiles as she blinks, staring up at him, 'you're alright. I suppose I wouldn't need to awaken your mother, then.'

XXX

'_Why would you need to do this, Tom?' _

_The tone is light, and he turns around and looks the younger boy in the eye; not for the first time, he wonders wryly how such weak-coloured hair, incongruently dark eyes and pale skin could altogether make such a strangely compelling face. There is beauty, possibly, in Titus, the seventy-seventh Heir to the House of Groan, but not of a kind that settles well on a fifteen-year-old; the boy wears his looks like it were an overlarge robe he is patiently waiting to grow into. _

'_You ask so much, Titus,' he replies easily, smiling at him, that same complacent, intimate smile he dispenses without thought. _

_The boy only stares back at him; abruptly, he leans back, and something passes over his face that looks dangerously like mutiny. _

'_You don't care for what I do, don't you, Titus?' he whispers, leaning closer to the boy, close enough to feel his breath against his own skin. 'Strange how you don't seem to love anything.'_

_Titus only turns away, although he doesn't pull back from him. Tom Riddle, in his Hogwarts robes with his long fingers smudged with ink and blood, waits. _

_Finally he responds. _

'_You don't love anything either, Tom,' Titus Groan says, and slowly backs away, moving into the darkness of the corridor. _

XXX

'So he can't use magic any more?'

Minerva McGonagall chooses not to turn around; the voice is balanced on a knife point. Her humiliation is enough, and McGonagall knows enough of the Malfoys not to turn around and be party of it.

'It was a very old spell You-Know-Who used on him,' McGonagall replies softly, feeling the faint points of red at her own cheeks; having known the person so long ago, she still cannot erase the shame at not being able to say his name. 'Unless…'

'Unless what, Professor McGonagall?'

The woman's tone is desperate, and McGonagall almost winces, hating that she should address her in this way, because it almost makes Narcissa Malfoy nee Black so young and so vulnerable again, and makes their relationship seem somehow more intimate. Resolutely keeping her back to her, she tries to keep her tone calm and steady, unable to stop herself from feeling intensely ashamed, as if somehow she has failed this girl – this woman, all these twenty years.

'Unless your son has a secret store of backbone, or unless the magic in his blood is more potent than any of us had thought,' she replies.

'Unless that's the case, Narcissa, I'm sorry.'

Finally she leaves the room, never once looking at the younger woman as she does so, feeling as if her last words applied in so many more ways than one.

XXX

The next morning, when her parents find out about Harry, Ron and Hermione, Ginny stares unflinchingly into her bowl of cornflakes, Timothy's hand warm around hers.

She feels, oddly enough, Fleur's eyes on her, but refuses the acknowledge her sister-in-law; Ginny would never admit it, but Fleur knows, maddeningly enough so, more than everyone ever thinks she does, and Ginny has always never liked to be on the receiving end of the thought processes of such characters of her ilk.

And Ginny, gripping her spoon with her other hand, is almost white with anger.

'They've already sent a team of Aurors to Godric's Hollow, Molly,' her father is saying, a Ministry owl having landed on the kitchen table fifteen minutes before with a note addressed to him. 'Shacklebolt's going to bring them back; they'll be safe.'

Her mother's expression clearly shows that she thinks otherwise. Her father reaches towards her, and places a placating hand on her shoulder.

And then her mother turns towards her.

'Ginny,' she starts, 'did any of them – Harry – did they…'

'No.'

Her mother seems taken aback at the answer; her father's mouth is opened slightly, his lips forming a rather ridiculous-looking 'o'.

She wonders why they are surprised.

'Well, Ginny, I'm sure…'

'I don't care, Mum,' Ginny replies, and turns back to her cornflakes, her left hand still in Timothy's right, and begins to eat, tasting only the numbing cold of the milk and nothing else.

She knows rather than sees her parents look at each other uncertainly, and suddenly a wave of disappointment washes over her; couldn't they be more sensitive, couldn't they solve everything? Aren't they supposed to be her parents?

Abruptly, there is a loud thump from the living room, just beyond the threshold of the kitchen; before anyone actually responds, a figure staggers in.

'Molly, Arthur,' rasps Remus Lupin, his face ashen. 'We've got them, but we're going to need your help…'

XXX

'There were Dementors everywhere,' he hears a voice saying, as he slowly gains consciousness, the tips of his fingers feeling cold and numb.

'Ginny,' he whispers, then more strongly so, as the room and its characters swim into view, 'Where's Ginny?'

Silently, the girl steps up from behind Lupin, nearing the bed, and the room is suddenly quiet, watching the two of them, but he doesn't care.

'I, Ginny…' he falters, reaching towards her.

Her face is still white and hard and angry, but she seems to understand, though. Without speaking, she bends down, and shifts so that he can embrace her.

He buries his face into her long red hair; holding her like a lover would, Harry Potter begins to weep.

XXX

The room holds its breath as he steps into it; the wards McGonagall had put up around his bed had been removed, because, well, there is nothing he has that can warrant its need anymore. And they know he wouldn't be leaving this house.

Weasley and Granger, both pale, sat side-by-side to each other facing the bed, with Weasley still holding a half-eaten chocolate bar in his hand.

Lupin, and the Aurors, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Moody and his cousin Nymphadora Tonks, and the other male Weasleys and their parents, arranged in their twos and threes and ones about the small room, faces stiff with helpless concern.

They pull back when they see him, not wanting to touch him.

Finally, Potter, half-reclined on the bed, holding on desperately to Ginny Weasley, pliant body almost glowing white in the full sunlight that filters in from the windows.

'I need you,' Potter chokes, and Ginny Weasley nods, never making a sound despite of how cruelly he holds her, and suddenly something catches in Draco's chest.

Angry, alone, and blind, he turns away, only knowing that he has to get away from her, and this room, this house.

XXX

The sunlight burns into his eyes when he steps out, but he half-runs, half-staggers into the backyard, through its gate, and into the meadows, directly before the forest; he slips and cuts himself – his bare feet bleeding, he can hardly see the blood before he continues, in his mad dash away from somewhere into anywhere, the colours bright about him, too bright for him to see.

He runs and he runs, and when he finally realizes that the darkness receives him, hurtling him downwards into his misery and unconsciousness, he almost forgets that he wants to cry.

XXX


	4. Chapter 4

_Standard Disclaimer_: All characters and concepts are owned by JK Rowling, save for the character of Timothy Groan, who however is admittedly largely inspired of the character Steerpike of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, as well as the characters of Titus and Tiernay Groan. The characterization of Terence Higgs, a mentioned-briefly-in-canon character, is purely of my improvisation.

With love and thanks to all previous reviewers.

_Chapter Four: Blood and Ties_

_4th June, 1997_

'I'm small enough, Tonks; anyway, I'm sure I heard something down there,' she says; finally, feeling the weight of Tonks' gaze lifting away slowly from herself, knowing all along that she would have had no choice to agree – this is her cousin they are looking for, considering – she lowers herself carefully into the small dip just on the inside of the bottom of the slope just a few feet away from the river, so covered with dead leaves it is almost unnoticeable, her hand gripping tightly to her wand.

Her feet touch the side of something, for half a moment, when she slips –

And everything begins to fall.

xxx

He stands at the window, feeling still slightly sick from his recent proximity to the Dementors, the dense heaviness of the chocolate still being rolled slowly in his mouth, when Harry begins to speak.

'Why do you think that Malfoy would do that?' he asks, and Ron half-turns to look at him as Hermione begins to answer the question, realizing as he does so, suddenly, how very small and pale Harry looks; it has never struck him until now that Harry isn't very tall or very wide: he is really slender, almost thin, and he is likely, by now, slightly more than half a head shorter than Ron himself. The green eyes stare out of the sharp face in a manner that almost seems painfully acute; Ron narrows his eyes, abruptly wondering why he only seems to notice them now…

And then from the corner of his eye, he notices the first red sparks being sent up into the summer sky.

xxx

With them gone, with more gone, it would be so much easier for everything to fall into plan, he thinks grimly, remembering just how Harry Potter had held on to Ginny, but his quick mind moves at so ruthless a pace that the thought has not completed itself before he has already begun to embark on another train of thought, calculating how exactly he can direct the current cast of players along the lines of his motivations, even as he trudges through the claustrophobic forest, too dense for this continent for it not to be magical.

When the first red sparks are sent up into the summer sky, back from the area where Ginny and Tonks are supposed to be, the thoughts freeze for a moment, and then transfigure themselves into something even more immediate, as Timothy Groan sprints towards them, wand at a ready.

xxx

Someone holds her, slender hands twisting roughly around her frame and pulling her up from the soft, mossy floor; opening her eyes, the panic coming up her throat forcefully like bile, she can hardly see anything.

'Malfoy,' she chokes, recognizing the white-blonde hair, shadowed into a pearl-like grey. 'I was right; you are here.'

He doesn't answer; what little light there is, coming from the mouth of the hole, allows her to understand that he has raised an eyebrow. The grey eyes are almost black, and strangely reflecting.

Finally he speaks. 'It wasn't like I had a choice,' he says, voice so bitter he almost sounds like himself again, and at this, in the closing darkness she begins to laugh, hysterically, at him and at their situation; she laughs and laughs, unseeing, until a sharp stinging pain across her cheek makes her realize abruptly that he has slapped her.

Shocked, staring at him, she whispers light-headedly, 'We don't need a lot of things in life, Malfoy; it isn't as we ever have choice.'

This time, he comes so close to her she sees the streaks down his face, like silver rivulets on a white plain. 'I really do wish you would say something original, Weasley, if we're –'

A sound from behind him causes Ginny to look up; in the darkness, another figure is coming towards them –

And she begins to scream.

xxx

His face whips up towards the female Auror before him when they hear the scream – Ginny's scream, from further away than either of them had truthfully expected.

Tonks flinches; the boy's sickly colouring seems to belie something else entirely more menacing that makes her irrationally afraid – wary – of him.

'Are there any shape-shifting creatures around here?' he demands, his clear sharp voice hard. He peers into her face, expression urgent and narrowed; the dark eyes almost a queer heavy red in the sunlight. 'Are there?'

'I…' Tonks begins uncertainly, but Timothy Groan has already turned his back on her, dismissing her hesitant answer, and bends down, starting to pull away the damp leaves from the mouth of the hole.

xxx

The silence seems to crystallize itself around them just as Weasley's screams grow louder and more sustained.

He has turned around; before them is a boy about his age, face pale, blue eyes wide and darkened almost black. His black hair is damp and curling against his forehead, and there is something about him that is forcefully familiar. His robes are black, too heavy for summer.

'Who are you?' Draco finally whispers, and it is strange how his words seem to echo into the closing space louder than Weasley's screams do.

At this point, Weasley abruptly stops screaming. A long silence hangs heavily over them –

'Tom,' Ginny Weasley sobs, and the boy's red lips stretch into a smile.

xxx

Yet there is something wrong, realizes Draco, even as his blood freezes at that singular spoken word.

The boy is too silent.

But when the sound of river begins to drum in his ears again, he doesn't know whether he should be relieved or not, as a slow horror begins to dawn on him.

xxx

'Oh sweet Merlin,' Tonks mutters under her breath, realizing, eyes wide as her hands begin to rake at the tangled leaves, opening the mouth wider and wider. 'You don't think…'

'Yes,' Timothy Groan nods, face tight; in a quick movement, he pulls himself up again, and points his wand in the direction of the hole.

'_Lumos maxima_!'

xxx

There is a sudden strong beam of light, and a voice; the boy's head snaps up in surprise. Almost instinctively, Draco reaches about Weasley for her wand, limp in her hand –

Without thinking, he whirls around, wand in hand, and yells the first thing that comes to his tongue.

'_Sectumsempra_!'

A slashing light; the world explodes.

xxx

'What was it?' comes Ron's voice, as he enters the threshold of the forest, Harry and Hermione close behind.

Timothy Groan's head turns sharply at this; there is something shrewd in the pale face, but Ron doesn't notice. Instead he steps around the younger boy, towards Tonks and Moody and Terence Higgs, a young Auror they had not been introduced to previously, who had been sent just that morning to help guard the Burrow.

Malfoy and Ginny, standing close and bloodied. Harry pushes past him; Ron stops in a vague kind of shock.

'Kelpie,' mutters Moody from his left, 'Malfoy destroyed it. Somehow the curse he used was a tad too…effective. This is about the largest piece of it left.' He lifts a hand; Ron almost retches at the small snake's severed head within it, its black eyes wide and unseeing.

Moody nods, seemingly immune to Ron's adverse response – instead, he brings the dead thing even closer to him, and continues in his usual agitated commentary, 'See how perfectly diamond-shaped the head is? And the blue sheen to its skin? Could only have come from the mane of a fully-matured Kelpie, a rare one at that, and I'll be surprised if it were indigenous to these areas.'

'What do you mean…' comes Groan's voice from behind them; Hermione beats him to it.

'So it's foreign? But why would it come here then? You don't think -?' She pauses, and then starts again, 'And isn't Malfoy supposed to be unable to do magic?'

But Ron's attention has been diverted, and he doesn't really hear what Moody says next.

'Ginny, Ginny, it's alright, I'm here now, and it's gone,' Harry is saying, turning Ginny around to face him; Ginny's eyes are wide and unseeing, and Ron is curiously and forcefully reminded of the dead snake in Moody's palm. There is something tightly coiling within her, Ron suddenly realizes, and instinctively he moves forward to pull Harry away –

But in a sudden movement Ginny has already forced herself away, towards Malfoy, silent and white beneath the blood, and falls against him.

xxx

There are strange points of red on Harry's cheekbones as the group slowly moves back to the Burrow; the embarrassed silence about him only seems to emphasize this.

Everything seems to slip about his mind and heart as he watches Ginny and Malfoy in front of him, Ginny holding tightly and blindly and quietly on to Malfoy like how a little girl holds on to her favourite toy in the dark. Malfoy is silent; even as Ginny had begun to hold him he has been silent. Ron and Groan had stepped in between them and Harry just moments before, and there had been something in Ron's expression that had been both desperate and forbidding; Ron is behind Harry now, and he can hear his quiet breathing. Something white-hot in Harry wishes he or Malfoy would say something, do something for Harry himself to have an excuse; his fingers, still touched with cold, dig into his palms, pressing against the fine bones.

A slow, cold sensation begins to fall into his consciousness, and he finally knows that somehow, everything has changed.

xxx

Words raped from her tongue, Ginny leans against the silent Draco Malfoy; not thinking anymore.

xxx

'I have so many questions I feel like a five-year-old,' begins Tonks, her words light, but there is a concentration to her expression that betrays her. Her gaze shifts to the right; Higgs is far enough away, speaking to Timothy Groan at the porch facing the backyard. She pauses at this sight, then abruptly turns back, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts.

Moody nods towards her; between her, Moody and Remus, the small coffee table in the living room of the Burrow is quiet.

'For one,' elaborates Tonks, 'Ginny's friend – that Timothy.' She hastens to continue as Remus raises an eyebrow in question; it doesn't escape her, however, that Moody's expression remains unchanged, as if he is unsurprised by her priority in suspicions, even in the light of conversation topics such as her cousin and Ginny and Harry, all of which would possibly sustain several afternoon teas in succession. 'I would certainly like to know more about _why _exactly he had that one-way Floo available at the onset, and why he didn't report his situation to the Ministry immediately, and save us all the trouble of running about that mausoleum of a house he calls his ancestral home, but that's another matter – what I would really like to know is how he could have possibly known, just now, that it was a Kelpie. I mean, you could have put two and two together sooner or later, what with the river, and the hole, and the damp leaves, but I'm telling you, his deduction was almost immediate. Practically as soon as Ginny began to scream he asked me if there were any shape-shifting creatures native to the forest. And not only that. _He _cast the Lumos spell, not me – and yet there has been no letter from the Ministry. _And _I would have sworn he was pleased when Ginny started clinging on to my cousin; I was watching him, and something very close to a smile had flitted past his face, and I'll bet ten Galleons that if we weren't there he would have started to dance.'

'I taught Timothy Groan for a year – he's an intelligent boy, albeit rather quiet,' nods Remus, 'But I would agree with you, Tonks. It _is _rather suspicious.'

'Not especially suspicious if you consider the boy's heritage,' retorts Moody gruffly, 'I knew his father – he was a few years younger than me at Hogwarts, Lucius Malfoy's year, to be exact, and McGonagall will tell you that his grandfather – he was in her year – was a black hole for question marks.'

Tonks, curiosity aroused, leans forward, 'How exactly? Any juicy gossip you know, Moody?'

'Well…his grandfather, Titus I think, was said to be thick as thieves with You-Know-Who when they were in Hogwarts, but as soon as he had finished his last year at Hogwarts he disappeared. Some said he controlled the Groan fortune quietly and spread it out across Europe, some suspected he worked underground for the Dark Lord, some thought he died…there was a lot of talk, but not nearly as much evidence, or at least never enough to trigger a concerted search. Slipped out of people's minds, after a while. And then his son appeared at age eleven to attend Hogwarts, seemingly out of nowhere. I remember his name was Tiernay – thin sort of boy, very ambitious, but silently so. Likely,' says Moody, his face screwing up at this point, as if pronouncing something sour, 'very much like Ginny Weasley's Timothy Groan. You'll have a lot of questions about him, too, but you'll likely never find the answers, Tonks. No one has.'

'And with what happened about that hole, I would like to know how the Kelpie could have known the exact form that would trigger such a response from Ginny …' says Remus, a thoughtful look upon his face, but abruptly Moody looks up, and gives a loud cough.

'Need something, Higgs?' growls Moody at the young man, good-looking in the pale, English fashion that seems rather to be the appropriate portrait of the young Slytherin. Except the lad's face always shows everything – one would wonder how he ever got past his Auror training with the transparency of his countenance. However, he had somehow been assigned duty by Kingsley Shacklebolt himself for the protection of the Burrow…

_He is_, thinks Moody, _either a very poor Slytherin, or a very exceptional one._

The young Auror simply shrugs at the question, and sits himself down between Tonks and Moody. 'I've spoken to Timothy,' he starts, his narrow face with its clear brown eyes earnest, 'he has rather a lot to tell.' He stops suddenly, and his long slender fingers begin to fidget, seemingly nervously, but Moody has been told it has been a long-time, almost unconscious habit of the lad, formerly considered Hogwarts's best Seeker since Charlie Weasley – before, of course, the coming of Harry Potter.

'I think – Moody,' he begins again, in that abrupt manner of his, the fingers twisting and untwisting themselves in his lap, the brown eyes now everywhere else but on Moody, Lupin or Tonks, 'I think we need to keep an eye on Ginevra – Ginny – Weasley and Draco Malfoy – especially Weasley.'

At the snort of frustration from Tonks, Moody sends her a sharp look, quelling whatever it is she is about to say. Higgs nods, jerkily, but his eyes are clear and steady; his gaze settles again on Moody. 'Maybe more so than Harry Potter, even. There's something going very wrong with the both of them.'

'Groan said this?' Moody finally speaks, his voice low.

The younger man's gaze is unwavering. 'He didn't.'

'Then how…?' begins Tonks, but Higgs interrupts, cleanly and clearly. His fingers finally extricate themselves from each other.

'It's precisely because he didn't,' he says, and for the first time in days, Moody allows himself a real smile, even as Tonks wears an expression of pure unadulterated disbelief on her face.

_A very exceptional Slytherin, is our Higgs_.

xxx

'Miss Weasley, you have to let go,' McGonagall says in exasperation, only short of physically plying the girl's white fingers from Draco Malfoy's arm – the arm on which the Dark Lord had written his war cry. The expression – or lack thereof – on Ginny Weasley's face has not changed since McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey Apparated onto the Burrow's grounds just minutes after the two had been brought in, and she still refuses to let go of the older boy; Draco Malfoy, for his part, has not spoken a word, and instead seems more dangerously pale by the second.

_His blood_, thinks McGonagall, almost wildly, frantically, _it must have been the only reason why he could have done such magic – uncontrolled magic – just moments before…_

And if Ginny Weasley does not let go of him so that Poppy can attend to him, he will almost definitely die.

'Minerva…' murmurs Poppy from her side, 'I have no choice; the girl's in shock, but I need the boy…'

McGonagall nods. Deliberately ignoring the furious look that Molly Weasley, practically physically restrained by her husband, sends in her direction; she points her wand at her student, and utters a spell.

There is a sharp, piercing scream, and then a liquid, thick and heavy – ink and blood, she knows, almost absently – splatters everywhere.

xxx

'Something's wrong,' begins Ron, pacing about his room, since they had been shooed away previously by a flustered-looking Madam Pomfrey from Ginny's, 'something's very, very wrong.'

'Of course something's wrong,' murmurs Hermione; worriedly she casts a glance at Harry, who has not spoken since arriving back at the Burrow from the woods.

'No, Hermione, you don't understand,' says Ron, frustration creeping into his voice, 'When I thought – when I somehow _knew_ – that something's going to happen to Ginny: and no, what just happened doesn't count, because it's something bigger, something _worse_…I thought that it meant that the three of us had to begin looking for the Horcruxes earlier, and try to destroy You-Know-Who as soon as possible. But I thought wrong…I think it must somehow be something that's much closer that we've somehow overlooked…'

'How do you think so much, Ron? Wouldn't your head explode?' Suddenly Harry's voice, quiet and with a kind of foreign quality, interjects. Ron looks at him, startled; there is something oddly mobile within the depths of his dark green eyes, and for the first time, looking at him, Ron almost thinks he tastes fear, its sweet, acrid edge cutting into the tip of his tongue.

'Harry,' says Hermione, a shocked, almost frightened expression on her face. And then Ron realizes why Harry sounded strange to him – there is a thread of real malice in his voice he has never suspected Harry would ever possess.

'There are bigger things than just you and the prophecy here, Harry,' Ron says, trying to keep his voice steady. 'And I know…'

'That Ginny is right in the middle of it?' interrupts Harry, the tone of his voice still very much the same. Ron forces himself not to take a step away from his best friend.

'I know that too, Ron,' he continues, 'and I'm going to stop it, even if it destroys either of us.' Then, abruptly, he gets up and starts towards the entrance of the room in one fluid movement, brushing almost roughly past Ron.

Ron already knows who he refers to.

When Ron's eyes meet Hermione's, he knows as well that things have truly fallen out of their control.

xxx

A whiplash of magical force, and then suddenly everything is static again.

Poppy, paler than McGonagall has ever seen her to be, starts to speak first, her words tripping over each other in their sudden torrent.

'I need to stop the blood first; he's lost too much blood. And I have to disinfect the wounds – I can't possibly imagine how…how _ink _could possibly have been in his system, but it cannot be anything good…'

Ginny Weasley, after that scream, suddenly sobs: the sound almost sounds strangled within her throat. Her parents rush towards her, but McGonagall, staring at the girl's white face, doesn't remember anything that ever looked so fearful.

The ink and the blood is everywhere about the room, staining the worn white sheets with crimson and black.

Abruptly McGonagall's eyes are back on Draco Malfoy, knowing that…

Knowing that it isn't just _his _blood that has allowed him to perform magic.

tbc

Extra notes:

-the spell used by Timothy Groan, _Lumos maxima_, is not confirmed canon, but does appear in the PoA movie (so says the HP Lexicon). Draco's _Sectumsempra _was used, ironically, on himself by Harry, who had learnt it from the Half-Blood Prince.


End file.
